


Barred from Heaven

by ramenbowie



Category: Splatoon
Genre: Black Markets, Drug Abuse, Explicit Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, made up ink diseases and substances and god knows what else can happen, strippers eventually!, wholesome inkling/octoling cultural exchanges
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29927961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ramenbowie/pseuds/ramenbowie
Summary: They say that not even death lets you escape this capital's black market.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Barred from Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends, i'm back with another story. i'm bringing some other ocs in the spotlight oooooo i'm super excited to write some female leads!!
> 
> this is a bit of a departure from how i usually write, im aproaching this with a barebones draft (mostly stored in my brain) and figuring stuff out along the way. i've been wanting to write something more, uh, wild and make use of canon and fanon because i love it.  
> it might get dark at times, and i expect some challenging topics to come up as well, but i'm curious what you guys will think about this ride! with that said, any warnings/tags might get added from chapter to chapter, and if i miss any, do let me know.
> 
> i also hope that i'll let myself post smaller updates more often, and keep a reasonable amount of polish. not sure if i'll be illustrating this like i did with anthologia, but every chapter should have some sort of promo art with the characters and stuff. let's see how this turns out :^)

* * *

Dichotomy. At one end, an octoling bares her lopsided fangs in a terrified shriek. At the other, an unidentified individual wiggles and writhes in their own orange mass of ink.

Allegedly, this stranger was supposed to be dead.

Itvara's already albino tentacles seem to have whitened more from the scare, and even the purple rings dotting their ends have dulled down. She had jumped from her comfortable corner, throwing her well-loved laptop on the ground in a split second, upon the first rustle. She wouldn't ever excuse herself for that, though, a more pressing matter is at her feet.

She can't tell if it's an inkling, her own kind, or any other sort of creature. Though, it's... humanoid enough. The way their own ink drips from their pores like sweat doesn't help with identifying them. They try lifting themselves on their knees and elbows, though they stumble back down. At every attempt, a ghastly groan escapes the individual. Though, the intimidating noises become pained whimpers, interrupted by coughs. More ink gets splattered on the ground. A spray of spit and ink escapes the bowed head.

The octoling breaks her defensive stance, and guides her hand away from the nearest blunt object. This body that got left to her watchful eye seems to be in terrible pain. No wonder, it's been decomposing since it got dropped into the military watchtower. It was in a limbo of transformation, as if stuck in between an upright and basal state, constantly losing and recomposing ink, solidifying and liquifying. At a certain time after death, a body may exhibit this sort of decay, hence Itvara did not pay much attention to the orange puddle. Initially.

Her teenage eyes have seen such unglamorous death through the surveillance cameras, though never so close. Itvara takes a careful step towards it, and is able to see the body's form regain some upright shape.

They finally get on their bruised knees, and their forearm raises to their mouth instantly, to contain the heaving coughs. Itvara was more inclined to believe this might be an inkling, from all the ink they could spew, but the traits aren't quite there. Their elbows have spikes protruding out of them, and she has never seen such physiognomy. The stranger has also got black, textured eyelids, though no such skin on the nose of their bridge. As the leftover ink drips off their hair, their tentacles appear to be merged together into a semi-solid singularity, protecting their head vaguely like a helmet. Itvara squints. The ends of these conjoined tentacles are crustacean pincers, not the usual suckers.

She’s never seen this sort of species before, but they must be at least half inkling or octoling. Alas, she gets so absorbed into this study, that she jumps again at the stranger's strained voice.

“God... damn it...” a wheezing, feminine-pitched slur sounds from the stranger. Despite all the ink surrounding her, you can hear the dryness of her throat from the curses. “I can’t... I can’t see...!” she spat, before falling into another quick fit.

She regains composure after a minute. As she settles again, the small strings of ink have stopped flowing over her eyelids and smudging forgotten mascara from her heavy bottom lashes. She is finally able to fully open her eyes. A cold chill runs down the octoling’s neck. Grey, hauntingly hollow irises stare back at Itvara. The stranger’s eyes don’t reflect light as you’d expect. Rather, all light seems to be absorbed into the ashen pools.

Is this a ghost?

Nonsense. Though, the young technician isn’t too sure what to do from here. The undead stranger’s left to blankly stare at what's ahead, eyes not even twitching from the harsh strips of light hanging above. With enough caution, Itvara tries to come closer, to check if she could get detected. Even if she hasn't made a sound, and the dust is still in its place, the orange-inked woman snaps in her general direction. She reaches one of her arms out, and waves it to make sense of the environment. Itvara's balance is thrown off as she dodges the arm, and the bridge of her nose crumples in her grimace.

"You," the hybrid growls, though she still stares into the void. "You, with the white halo. Tell me where," she gasps for air, "where I am."

Itvara blinks, a bit too disoriented. Is she referring to her white tentacles...? What a weird word for them. She knows Inklish, she's rather good at it from the hours she spent reading and listening to it, and sneaking conversations over the Octarian Firewall, but her attempt to answer is too slow.

"If this isn’t hell, then there was some sort of mistake,” she strains the sentence from start to end.

“I-- It’s the Valley,” Itvara stutters in her accent. It is close enough to an Inkopolitan one, though tinted with an Octarian intonation. "Excuse me. Did you also think you died?"

Although, that's a rather stupid question. She was unconscious a minute ago, after all. And here she is, breathing again. Itvara can’t tell if the stranger is particularly happy about it.

Regina, Itvara’s _business associate_ , so to speak, might've picked this body up from Inkopolis right after it got knocked out. All the blame falls on her if this turns ugly. ... _You could’ve ‘least felt a pulse or something! Don't tell me you didn’t...!_

The woman doesn’t care much for her own death. "...Did- Did that bastard dispatch me?!" Her fingers, clawy as Itvara’s, though more threatening, suddenly clench in an angry ball. “Answer! You, _gah_...! M-Must know it!”

The octoling has no idea who the _bastard_ is, but, yes, the stranger was _dispatched_ , in some way or another. Itvara was never too privy to her fellow rebel’s activities above ground. She only watched over Regina and her subordinates in the Valley, so that their business was conducted in utmost secrecy. She keeps her assumptions to herself, and her screaming questions for Regina.

In a surge of fury, the stranger tries lifting herself on her feet. Her height is a bit imposing, with the added tall platforms she's been wearing. Itvara can feel her chest pumping faster.

However, the stranger quickly tumbles to her knees, her breath falls short, and she's coughing on her own ink. Her skin ripples. She’s back to ground one, about to disintegrate again.

The technician winces. Itvara’s no soldier, she quickly grows sick of seeing this ordeal. Her cold, military common sense tells her to let the stranger die off, though her gut sense tells her to do something about it. She springs to the stacked crates surrounding her workspace’s walls, and starts throwing them on the floor at random, to hastily inspect their cryptic inscriptions. Some rattle louder than the others.

It seems that the stranger heard the racket in her vicinity. She hisses through the pain. “In- Ink rejection,” she hints. “Don't... I’ll be fine. I’ll stop rejecting. Sooner or later.”

Itvara briefly turns. “How do you know?”

"Because, I fucking poisoned myself,” she raises her head and, somehow, is able to look right at Itvara, even through her hazy eyes. Is her vision coming back?

No matter. There’s no need to tough it out. The octoling’s got a brief idea of what to use now. Her visual memory should serve her well. Not the crate with the cans, not the crate with the pills, _definitely not_ that dubiously-marked one. She goes for the one with the vials, rather large, oblong ones, exchanges the cap for one with a needle tip, and turns back to her half-dead custody.

The orange-inked woman stubbornly keeps trying to stand up, though Itvara jolts to her before any more stammering. The weakness takes control once more. She doesn’t meet the ground. The woman hits the smaller octoling in the way. The acrid, though still salty scent of compromised ink hits Itvara’s nostrils like mad. Itvara takes her chance, a powerful jab goes somewhere. It ends up into the stranger’s leg, making her hiss right in Itvara’s ear. A thick, though short needle punctures the thin layer of pale skin that barely formed. Traces of the viscous liquid found inside the vial turn orange. The stranger wants to thrash in panic, though she’s spending monumental energy on any movement.

“Calm down, this is octarian medicine.” Half truth.

The woman bites her tongue before pulling the bootleg syringe out of her thigh. Itvara can feel the other's muscles clench on her, her spiny elbows suddenly shoving in her chest.

“You’re only filling my ink with more crap!” she drops the vial and pushes Itvara away, continuing in her unknown way.

“Wh-! Where are you going!?”

The woman reaches her hands out to feel for any obstacles. But she doesn’t reach too far, she grazes over one of the walls.

“I can’t stay here, for fuck’s sake,” she grumbles. She places her unsure hand better on the wall, to lean onto it, should her legs fail again.

Itvara picks the vial off the ground, in case the stranger reconsiders pulling it out of her. "Wait! You need to recover at least!" ...Or else, some bastard soldier will catch wind of all of this, if they find a collapsed Inkopolitan around this very watchtower. She’d say that if she dared. She doesn’t.

The stranger’s black-stained lip nearly curls to a snarl. "...I don't know who you are, but if you're so liberally giving me injections, you'll tell me how to go back home.”

Seahorse in the headlights. Regina never told her the course of action should the body, _you know_ , ever come back to life. _Certain_ octarian rebels thought this could be an opportunity for some easy money, but it’s suddenly a headache. They should’ve stuck to what they knew best.

“I- I’m not sure I can do that,” Itvara stutters. “I was supposed to get rid of you, somehow, but, um, you started moving...”

The menacing pincers at her hair’s ends clap once. Silence falls. Itvara can't tell if it was voluntary or not, or directed to her. Hopefully not.

“Great. Really great. Why bother keeping me alive then,” she rubs the spot on her leg that was punctured, in hopes that it will quickly close up, "Just let me melt in a ditch outside.”

"Um...” _No._ “You'll have to wait here."

She ceases protesting rather quickly. Her condition eats up at her will. The woman swings her leg around for some clear floor space, before sitting resigned. All the ink that she left behind in her struggle, it got cleared up by the aerial microorganisms already.

“I don't get what you want to do with me. It would be useful to know. I might want to think of nicer things before I die again,” she half-heartedly quips.

Empathy gets the better of the technician. She can't say much, but she can at least ease the stranger's nerves. If so, she might also get her on her side, keep her from blindly attacking her, or bumping into someone outside. “I don’t think that will happen. We won't gain anything if you die... again.”

"Absolutely heartwarming," she shuts her eyes and leans back, hitting one of the crates filled with contraband. Despite this, she doesn’t want this to turn into a stalemate. "How about... You hand me the thing you stuck in me, if it's supposed to be medicine," she asks, her voice strained from trying to keep every movement minimal. Any unnecessary effort will put her at more risk than it’s worth.

Relieved, but just barely, the octoling shifts her grip on the vial. She wants to throw it in the half-crab’s direction, though she realises her hand-eye coordination is pretty messed up. She carefully places it in the clawy hands, pushes a little on it, such that the crabling can clasp it.

The stranger seems to have calmed down a bit. She speaks a bit softer, more controlled. She's got a sort of natural, slight hoarseness in her voice. “And... You said this is octarian. So, all made in the underground.”

“...Yes.” Itvara stands her ground, just in case. This stranger gives the impression of knowing more than the average, dumbed-down Inkopolitan. Her presence certainly begs for respect.

She brings the large vial right up to her foggy eyes, tilts it from side to side, and squints at the orange traces that have formed during those few seconds it was stuck in her. Itvara can only nervously watch for her reactions. She vigorously shakes it, and the rest of the colourless liquid turns her very own orange. She takes a few seconds before saying something seemingly unrelated, something so obvious. “I take it that this _Valley_ place is underground.”

A silent nod. The nod turns to a hum, in case it wasn’t registered. All of these meek responses come out without Itvara’s volition, as if she were speaking to a higher-up.

"Just my luck."

She lowers the vial away from her eyes, and shuffles to sit upright. A bit too comfortably for Itvara’s liking, and too telling, the orange-inked woman sticks the vial’s needle in the crook of her spiky elbow. Bullseye in her vein. All without looking.

Itvara blinks the second-hand flinch away. She squeezes her violet claws in her palms. The other is slowly regaining some vividness in her ink. Her skin goes from sickly pale to a light, pastel orange. 

It's time to shift gears. Itvara’s tone becomes more opposing. She clears her throat. “Who are you?”

“Girl, I should be the one asking. You know what this is. It’s no medicine.” The liquid steadily empties in her arm. The pale dots across her hair faintly glow. “You’ve got synthetic ink transfusions, and you’re not telling? You know, junkies up there use this to dope themselves before battle,” she vaguely points upwards with her nose.

...Shoot. She didn't get the right one. She wanted the _numbing_ one, the one meant for chill-outs, not the one that makes inklings go into full ecstatic rampage mode. The dopamine content in the two types is wildly different. A silent, though harsh Octarian swear slips her lips.

It’s as if she read her mind. "Luckily for you, these alone don’t really have an effect on me. My body and my ink together don’t work like you’d expect. They barely work at times,” the woman mumbles, with a trace of apathy. “Thanks for the transfusion, I suppose.”

“But, ink flows through you,” the skepticism is strong in Itvara. “The rush should be the same.”

“It... really doesn’t work like that,” she groans. It seems that a slightly-irritated expression is right at home on her face. “If you think I’m lying, you know what to do.”

_No, I don’t._ Heck, Itvara hasn’t held a weapon in years. The last time she shot something, it was a training dummy, crudely shaped like an inkling. No matter your role in the Army, you were forced into this sort of training, for the bleaker days that may come. She hopes the occasion will never arise. Why be another cog in the killing machine?

A few awkward, silent minutes pass. The stranger’s been holding her eyes shut for a while. It’s as if she is waiting for that final, fatal blow. On repeated occasions, her head droops to one side, though she jerks it back up. Is she falling unconscious? ...Having spasms?

Neither. Her dark, long brow is as irritated as ever. “...You’re still there? Don’t let me doze off. Talk some more.”

“Huh? Talk about what?”

“Just talk.”

In all fairness, conversations with Inkopolitans are somewhat nauseating. Their speech is messy, often without a clear intention. They don’t say anything concrete, even with all the words they have at their disposal. Some do it for the narcissistic sake of hearing their own voices. These sorts of negative impressions, caught from the brief communications she maintains with the surface, are what Itvara’s trying to unlearn.

“...Do you have a subject?” Utility primes above all. Including small-talk.

“You sound like you wish I went mute instead of blind,” she deadpans. ”Actually, I do.”

The sudden pause in her sentence is concerning.

The crabling’s eyes are narrowing. “Does the Sepia Market ring a bell?”

...She tries to hide it, though Itvara still lets an audible gasp.

"I'll take your silence as a yes."

The crabling knows _too_ much.

"H- Hold on! You still haven't answered me!” Itvara reasserts, too defensive for her own good. “Wh- Who are--"

"I'm no slick bitch, okay?” She cuts the blabbering short. “I’m a nobody. You won't get anything off my head. You got ripped off."

"Ripped off?"

Itvara’s face betrays puzzlement, which the other picked up from the question. The technician’s confusion isn’t due to the phrase itself, but due to the other’s understanding of the situation.

"Wasn't I sold off?"

"I can be wrong, but..." Itvara crouches opposite of her. She lowers her voice slightly. "You got, uh, disposed of." She doesn't know for certain if she used this word correctly, though she said it anyway. "Contra cost," she tries to elaborate.

"... _He_ _paid_ for me to get dumped here?" Her voice shrilled on the first syllables.

The octoling raises her palms defensively. "I don't know what happened, I promise. We usually don't do this kind of thing."

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding-...” her hollow eyes roll, they go hand-in-hand with her deep sigh. She suddenly looks very, very unimpressed. Disappointed, even.

Since her anticlimactic realisation, the pieces in the crabling’s head look like they’re starting to line up. She purses her lips, closes her eyes to concentrate. The vial emptied up by now, though she doesn’t notice. She keeps hold of it, in her arm.

Itvara takes this less-tensioned pause as an occasion to finally grab her laptop. It’s not sticker-clad, like those fancy ultrabooks all the coffee-shop kids have. There is only one plain label on its bottom, with an identification number, a version number, and a revision number: _DWL-17 V4R4_. If you could think of the most standard model of a laptop there could be, this is it, because there literally is only one model for the Army’s stooges. The casing’s a heavy-duty aluminum, which still managed to get a dent on the lid. Definitely not from earlier. She silently sits cross-legged next to her newest acquaintance.

If only she could access the live-feed for the kettle cameras. The bloody things keep disconnecting. Could be the outdated firmware, the clash between the different protocol versions, or any other esoteric reason. Nobody will ever bother with changing these cameras with updated ones, even if they pose the biggest security risk. ...Case in point. Yours truly.

She tries bringing them online again, with some well-preserved terminal commands in a plain text file. All of this effort, just to squint for a beaten-down jeep, rolling out of the off-limits sectors, with the off-limits kettles that point upwards. Though, if she had to take a guess, the crew still isn’t back from the surface. This whole... dead person delivery threw the schedule off. She foolishly hoped the cameras could disprove her.

A rustle. An indescribable smile creeps on the stranger’s lips.

"You must be the suppliers then."

You’d expect a more substantial reaction, but... Itvara harrumphs. Whatever. She can't really hide the whole Market deal from her, if she already knows about it. At least a stone lifted off her chest. Any possible involvement this woman's got with the Sepia Market might make her less predisposed to doing something crass.

The octoling rests her head on her palm, her forearm on her knee. She keeps clicking around the trackpad while talking. “How much do you know?”

“I guess I’ve seen enough to get the full picture. Too bad I’ve muddled it up,” the crabling leans her aching body back, and stretches her legs out. The transfusion gives her some pins and needles in her limbs, as her body acclimatizes to the new, pristine ink. They should fade out soon. Her consciousness is way clearer by now, compared to how she woke up.

“How? Have you been buying, or...?”

“From time to time. Straight from the bastard that works with you all. Praise his idiocy for getting me here,” she trails off. “Look, you don’t have to question me. You know this.”

“No, actually...” Itvara pouts, feeling slightly accused here. “I just do my thing, alone. I’m not really a supplier.”

The crabling’s brow lowers, pondering over something unsaid. Just as she wants to open her mouth, a cold sweat unexpectedly runs over her entire body.

Not again... 

Her back springs straight. Suddenly, there’s not enough oxygen. Her thoughts begin to jumble. She’s breaking into gasps for air. In between them, she runs a trembling hand over her skin, deeply dreading the thought of it starting to liquify.

The technician leaves all else and is back on the tip of her heels. She grabs the woman by her shoulders, and keeps her from flopping. “S-Same transfusion?” She tries to stay calm, though the intention doesn’t carry over in her voice.

The stranger just nods, or tries to act a nod through the shaking, unable to say something. The heaving brought tears in the corners of her eyes. She feels like passing out any second now.

She won’t let her, she won’t render their initial struggle in vain. Itvara runs back to the tipped-over crates, and does the same as before. It’s almost robotic.

She kneels and gently pulls on the other’s orange-tinted forearm, coaxing her to stretch her entire arm out. Now, it’s just a matter of sticking the needle back into the mark from earlier. The problem is that the stranger’s shaking more violently by the second.

To hell with being squeamish. Itvara switches her soft hold to a tighter one. The needle tip grazes the swollen bump. Her acid-green eyes shut when her wrist pushes in. Clear turns to orange.

Forget anything she’s ever done for the Army, or for the Market. These are some of the most nerve-wracking moments in Itavra’s life. She had just seen this vial work, and yet, she still anxiously hopes for the synthetic ink to take effect. The force she feels against her stabilizing hand diminishes slowly, until it dwindles as a minor shiver.

They’re not going to separate anytime soon.

* * *

She’s not sure why she feels so disgustingly ungrateful. Just the mere thought that she could be ungrateful makes her wish she hadn’t made it through. Would’ve she been grateful if she actually landed in hell? ...How could she know? In a way, she’s ungrateful for being saved not once, but twice. This sort of mindset warrants that she should’ve been left to rot, honestly.

An eel that endlessly eats its own tail comes to mind.

She’s been fixating on the internal image of it for a few hours. She hasn’t moved much. In the meantime, she had a blanket slid under her, and another one on top of her. Some sort of pillow is supporting her back, though its casing material is more suitable for a parachute than a bed lining. Nevertheless, something more cuddly is supporting her abused arm. From the way it shifts under her arm’s weight, she can guess it is a stuffed toy. While her barely recovered brain debated the role of life and death, she mindlessly pet the thing, curled its fleece between her fingers. She’s a grown-ass woman, god forbid doing this outside of her own privacy, but... It didn’t matter if the octoling saw this. Nothing so minuscule can ever gain importance again after what happened.

She honestly thought she would’ve been done for. She thought she wouldn’t wake up. She isn’t able to remember what she was thinking or doing in the minutes leading to her collapse on the surface, but it would be impossible to forget those awful sensations. Her skin was freezing, her insides were burning. A film was forming over her eyes. Her ink was swelling inside her own skin. The final touch she’d felt, one over her risen vein, was the thing that sent her off. She doesn’t want to know whose touch it was.

Now... It’s all oddly numb. There’s a foreign afterglow of energy, from all the dopamine and adrenaline-enhanced transfusions that got pumped into her. Though, a large part of the chemicals will remain suspended in her ink, with nowhere useful to go.

She still can’t see. She’s coming to terms with seeing only blobs of light. They’re so incredibly annoying, it’s more preferable to watch the darkness behind her eyelids.

Whatever money the octoling might’ve made off her, it probably wasn’t worth it, judging from the stock she had to waste on her. If she had to take a guess, she’d say there are about a dozen empty vials surrounding her, in case the octoling hasn’t picked them up yet.

A metallic heel thumps in her direction, reminding her of the other presence. In its way, it hits a smooth, hard surface and something softer, possibly a carpet. As the presence approaches, she flicks her index finger’s claw against the glass vial repeatedly, to check if it's going empty again. It sounds so.

“Oh. Do you want me to change it?” the flat, though youthful voice rings from above. Then, it gets joined by the sound of glass hitting itself and the bottom of a bag. Cleaning was overdue, but it’s better late than never.

“No, thanks. My arm’s had enough for now.”

“Um... Do you need some water? Or snacks? I... actually have kelp crisps.” And nothing else. But Itvara won’t expose herself like that, not so soon.

The woman smirks, fleetingly. “I’ve never had underground kelp crisps.”

The octoling’s voice sounds a bit farther. “We don’t have them here, actually. I make the suppliers bring me surface or deep-sea snacks from their runs. Otherwise, I won’t disarm any security systems for them when they come back,” the mischief in her soul becomes more apparent, the more she gets accustomed to the stranger. “I tell them at the border,” she grabs the walkie-talkie in her belt and presses its side, prompting a crackly beep. She screams into the receiver, equally as crackly: “ _SHOW ME THE CRISPS!!_ ”

A puff of laughter slips the blackened lips. It encourages a bit more life in the crabling’s voice. It makes her briefly forget about this miserable, sickly condition she’s in. “Speaking of, what’s your role, exactly? Supervisor? Hacker?”

“Ehh...” Itvara thinks of the best way to explain it, without going down the rabbit hole. She comes closer again, this time with a rustling foil bag. “We try not to use any titles.” Just _try_ , because they all subconsciously know Regina’s still the one that coordinates them all, and runs all over the place. It’s not easy to completely give up on a hierarchical structure. “We are trying to escape the roles the government is pushing on us.”

The crabling curls her fingers under her chin, intrigued by the cultural exchange that spontaneously sparked between the two. “Well. What’s your _government-assigned_ title, then?”

“Technician #17: Dewaele Itvara.”

Itvara pushes on the air-filled bag, making a loud pop. The woman flinches, and squeezes on her already-shut eyes out of reflex. The octoling’s ears droop apologetically, and she gives the other the privilege of picking a crisp first. The smell is unmistakable, she hovers her hand above.

“Dew-ail,” she poorly repeats.

“Dewaele...”

“Itvara,” she firmly, tiredly settles on it. She fishes a kelp crisp and crunches on it. “You don’t mind me using your surname, hopefully.”

She just remembered Inkopolitans have their names the other way. “Ah. Sorry. That’s, err, my first name.” It feels weird to hear it out of someone else’s mouth. “Y-you can use it, it’s fine.”

The crabling gives a slight smile. “I’m Dana. Just Dana.”

“Dana...” she tries to match the inflexion.

“I wish we had a nicer introduction, Itvara. You seem so kind. You caught me on my worst day ever.”

This is surreal. Here she is, eating crisps with a ghost, becoming acquainted with it. And not any ghost, but one from the surface. It only makes her wonder, is this the closest she’ll ever get to experiencing the elusive surface, in which her associates mindlessly hazard into? Itvara can take many risks behind a screen, though close to none in her physical world.

“I don’t want to look like I don’t appreciate your help, but my earlier point still stands. I really need to get home.”

“...Indeed,” Itvara remembers the rest of the Market’s crew. She fears what sort of ideas they’ll have for Dana. Dana must know too. “But, is your condition good enough?”

Dana claps the kelp dust off of her fingers. She opens her eyes (still grey-irised, still scary) and stands up, albeit twitchingly. “Fuck no. That’s where you come into play.”

_...Fuck no!!_


End file.
